To keep track what I have been up to and my thoughts on issues important to me.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

my take on a jellyroll race quilt

This is my take on a jellyroll race or lasagna quilt. I wanted to do one and I needed
to make a quilt for a wedding gift for a friend's granddaughter so away I
went.

I studied several you-tube videos. Starting with the Missouri Quilt Co. video with a white block spacer between each new strip. When I got to thinking about how I would construct and quilt a king-size quilt I decided to turn it into a giant nine-patch. I decided that a random placed white patch might not look so hot so I went with the original jellyroll race quilt look.

A 40-strip jelly roll will make approximately 50" by 64" quilt. So how would you expand it to get a king-size quilt? Web surfing to the rescue, of course! And now that I want to write it up I can't find the you-tube videos that explained how to make different sized quilts! Damn-it!

Any way, I wanted to make an 84" by 84" center. The formula is to take inches wide times 32 rows, then divide by the length of the strips for how many strips in the main body of the quilt. Next for the 20 inches left over which is 10 rows do the formula again to know what you need for the added length of the quilt you want to make. Okay, clear as mud, right! LOL!

This lady's advice on adding the extra strips to get the length of quilt you wanted was to add them evenly to the top and bottom, in my case five rows top and five rows bottom. Just to make sure I had enough (cause I'm paranoid like that) I stopped and measured my strips when I had sewn the first seam in the first batch of strips together. I was too long and trimmed it back to the size I needed.

This is the back. I randomly sewed strips I had cut from the stash together.

Cut and turned as a nine-patch

See those two yellow strips that are side by side? That's the middle of your long strip of fabric, which would be no big deal if you were leaving as one big piece. However, I wanted to make blocks, so I picked off that bottom row and re-sewed it to the top of that block.

This is the front. I decided to sort the fabric into color families and I changed up the construction, too. After I had sewn the long strip in half, I cut the strip in the lengths I need for the width of the quilt top. Then I sewed the top in three sections before cutting it into my blocks. I think it turned out better. I didn't have any spots where the fabric doubled over on top of it self.

This is the nine-patch layout of the top.

I didn't like the original border fabric I had picked out so I switched to this black print. Better but still not the pop I was looking for. I decided to use cornerstones to finish the borders. After sewing them on I liked the square-in-a-square the best.

I'm thinking I should have used black strips to set the quilted blocks together. That might have helped the over-all look of the quilt by giving the eyes someplace to rest from busyness of the quilt.

Will I make another jelly roll/lasagna quilt? Only if it is in a size I could comfortably quilt as one piece in my machine, so that would mean probably nothing bigger than a twin or maybe a double with a traditional weight batting.

So the label is on and the quilt is ready to be shipped. Now to finish up another quilt I'm working on for a wedding in October.